


Alternating Current

by Nightdog_Barks



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Dolphins & Whales, Friendship, Gen, Loss, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-26
Updated: 2008-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks





	Alternating Current

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bironic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bironic/gifts).



_**_SG:A_ Fic: Alternating Current**_  
For [](http://bironic.livejournal.com/profile)[**bironic**](http://bironic.livejournal.com/) , on her birthday. Started late last night, finished this afternoon. Unbeta-ed, so there are probably a million mistakes -- **concrit** is welcome. 1,391 words.

Happy birthday, **Bironic**.

 _For[](http://bironic.livejournal.com/profile)[ **bironic**](http://bironic.livejournal.com/)_

  
 **Alternating Current**

  
One morning Rodney wakes up and becomes part of the machine.

Although that's not really the right term -- it makes him sound like he's become the second verse in some song by the Police or Pink Floyd, and let's just stop any power-rock metaphors right in their tracks.

No, he becomes part of the _City_ , of _Atlantis_ , and while under normal circumstances (except what the hell is _normal_ about this?) he'd be overjoyed, rapturous even, to have had this happen.

The only problem is, he can't tell anyone.

As far as he can tell, he disappeared precisely at 9:34 a.m., just as he was about to step outside his quarters, walk to the Mess Hall, and join Sheppard for a quick breakfast meeting before they had to see Woolsey and explain just why the natives of P29-X583 didn't want to trade for mangoes anymore.

Nothing had really _happened_ \-- no bright flash of light, no blackout, and, probably best of all, no _pain_. Just a ... jump to the right, and damn it, there's another _song metaphor_ , and he's not going there.

He'd found himself with a bird's-eye view of everything, from the very tippy-tops of the soaring City spires to the deepest, darkest depths of the City's sub-sub-sub-basements, and _hello_ , didn't anybody ever _clean_ around here? He saw Lorne sparring with Ronon, and Woolsey writing up a report, and Sheppard giving up waiting on him and going alone to meet with Woolsey. He could see everything, all at once -- it was sort of like having an insect's compound eye, refracted images everywhere, and it took him a minute (okay, ten minutes, tops) to learn to zoom in on the things he really wanted to see.

Before he did learn that, things were kind of ... scary, maybe, and yeah, he screamed like a little girl, so what, I mean, who _wouldn't_ have and what difference did it make anyway because no one could hear him.

And that was the big thing, maybe the _only_ downside to this -- Rodney can't contact anyone, tell them what happened. He tries to talk to people, but they ignore him. He stands in front of people -- Teyla, Ronon, Radek, Sheppard, especially Sheppard, but they all just keep walking, walking right through him without slowing down or batting an eye. And they're even _worried_ about him, and somehow that makes it worse. Because they _are_ looking for him, and so he tries to communicate, tries to send computer messages, tries to write on the whiteboards, but his hands (which he can _see_ , he knows they're _there_ ) just glide through everything without really touching it. He tries to think if he _did_ touch something right before this happened, and so he goes back to his quarters, _thinking_ himself there, and he's there, and once there he _stands_ there by the door, willing whatever had happened once to happen again, to return him to the corporeal, to the land of the walking, talking, living, breathing _humans_.

Or, y'know, whatever. At this point Rodney isn't so sure he'd mind coming back as a Wraith, just so long as he _came back_.

Except he doesn't. Nothing happens, and so all he can do is watch as everyone looks for him -- and doesn't find him.

* * *

They send a box of rocks back to Earth. Granted, it's a _coffin_ -shaped box, with a big Canadian flag draped over it, but it's still a goddamn box of rocks.

Sheppard gives the eulogy, and Teyla looks like she's been crying, and Ronon and Beckett wear pretty much the same stone-face, and then it's done and the box of rocks vanishes through the ring and everybody goes back to work.

* * *

Rodney finds himself watching the whales a lot -- this new ocean has them too. They have a language, and he discovers that, just like being able to see everything at once, if he concentrates on just the right channel, he can understand them.

Not that the whales talk about anything really interesting, but it's something to listen to when he wants to tune out the human babel.

A lot of what they talk about is the City, how it appeared in the sky one day and fell into Ocean (and that's what they call it, Ocean without a _the_ , no function word needed to designate their reality). Except they don't call it the City, or Atlantis -- to some of the whales it's Giant Many-Legged Skitter Bug, while to others it's Big Dead Floating Squid. It seems there's a basic disagreement as to the nature of the City, and after Rodney gets tired of listening to the debate, he turns his attention back to Atlantis.

He's found that he can turn the lights off on C Deck.

That's it. He can't turn them back on, he can't make them blink in Morse code. This is what the great Rodney McKay has been reduced to -- turning the lights off in some obscure landing where nobody ever goes anyway. There's not even any reaction -- no one says "Hey, Dr. McKay's trying to contact us!" or "Wow, isn't that weird!"

No, it's just "Fuck, the lights are out on C Deck again," and if he keeps turning them off every time they turn them back on, they just leave them off for a while.

Defeated by sheer apathy, Rodney goes back to listening to the whales.

* * *

Administrations come and go.

Woolsey departs, replaced by Robinson, who's replaced by Stevens. There are more, but Rodney doesn't bother learning their names.

When Teyla's almost killed on the planet with the blue moss-trees, she leaves the team for good to raise her son. Ronon disappears, but not with Rodney -- he vanishes on a mission, and is simply never seen again.

John gets sent back to Earth.

C Deck goes dark, and so, for a very long time, does Rodney.

* * *

When he wakes up, John is back.

Or maybe he wakes up _because_ John is back -- he's not sure which came first or how he knows. Maybe he felt something, maybe the City whispered his name.

Maybe it was just time to wake up.

He catches a glimpse of John, but doesn't zoom in; instead, he watches for a while. Sheppard's on the West Pier -- the sun is going down but there's a lot of activity, a lot of people, and Rodney squints a little. Maybe this is the newest pastime on Atlantis, watching the sun set. If he zooms in he can distinguish individual faces -- Radek's there, and Woolsey -- what'd he come back for? And ... huh, there's Jeannie ... what the hell's his _sister_ doing here?

Rodney's _curious_ , and wow, he's almost forgotten what that felt like, and so he dispenses with the bug's-eye-view and actually walks down to the Pier.

He stands beside John and looks out over the waves -- far off, he can see Sam Two spuming, geysers of water fountaining into the sky, and hear the faint whaliness of her singing.

 _Water, Ocean, fish, swim, light, light, light --_

And she's right, there's something weird about the light -- it's as if it's washing over Rodney in _waves_ , just like Ocean, and the sun's coming _up_ , not going down, and when has he ever made a mistake like _that?_

Sheppard's knuckles are white where he's gripping the guard rail, and Rodney stares at them. The backs of John's hands are tan, with little dark hairs curling all the way up to that ubiquitous black wristband, and that doesn't make sense either because the last time Rodney saw John he was gaunt and grey-haired, going through the gate with his dress uniform hanging off his shoulders like a little kid's Halloween costume.

Someone (Radek? or is it a feminine voice?) shouts something -- _worked_ , or _working_. John turns his head, slowly, and looks at him, and the wave of dizziness is so strong it almost knocks Rodney down.

John's hair isn't grey, and his face isn't soft and fallen in and lined with wrinkles -- it's damp and streaked with sea-spray, and the hand that's gripping Rodney's shoulder is warm and solid, and all Rodney can do is blink away the salt in his own eyes as John smiles and says --

"Welcome back, Rodney."

  
~ fin


End file.
